The Sports Gene, by David Epstein

RATING

1 star

0 stars = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

This is book is somewhat of a rebuttal of the Gladwell 10,000 rule.  I commend the author for being bold, looking at issues of race, geography, and genetics, in an area of where this kind of research seems taboo.  It would be trite, but not inaccurate, to say that Epstein’s argument boils down to a nature and nurture explanation of elite athleticism.  But it explains those arguments in captivating ways.  Genes matter, it’s not just about deliberate practice or hitting 10,000 hours.  But culture matters too.  If you go to Jamaica or Kenya, you’re not immediately going to find a Olympian sprinter or marathoner, but you will find people who will biologically respond better to intense and elite training.  

Highlights:  elite athletes “chunk” and develop neural pathways to overperform.  A fastball reaches the plate quicker than human reaction time allows a swing, so a slugger subconsciously determines when to swing based on a pitcher’s shoulder positioning upon release.  Natural selection and sexual selection manifests to physical traits. Humans are similar to primates and so the male genetic difference in size and strength is related to the gestation period of women.  Genghis Khan as a lot of descendants, around 16M Asian men have an identically shared Y chromosome.  Jamaicans may be the best sprinters in the world because people with recent West African ancestry may have more fast twitch muscle fibers due to the evolutionary response to protect against malaria.  Kenyans are the best marathoners in the world due to their relative longer and thinner legs, and their running culture, infrastructure, and implicit/explicit social influences that encourage and necessitate running.

LONG SUMMARY

This is a re-read from a couple of years ago.  I was thinking about this book the other day and decided to give it a second go around.  I may also do that with the Stuart Scott biography I listened to a few years ago as well.

-This book is kind of the antithesis of the Malcom Gladwell 10,000 hour rule.  While in Outlier, Gladwell postulates that 10,000 of hours of deliberate practice in a particular discipline is enough to gain above average proficiency, this book seems predicated on the thesis that some people may be born or gifted with traits that accelerate their path to elite status.  One of the interesting facts is that when analyzing practice time for elite athletes, the range of hours is very broad.

-Book starts with a story of a world class softball player who is able to strike out all the heavy hitting major leaguers.  The reason, major league sluggers don’t just keep their eye on the ball and swing.  The ball comes in too fast for the 200 millisecond reaction time of humans.  Rather, hitters chunk their information, mainly by relying on ingrained cues, primarily the shoulder position of the pitcher when the ball is thrown.  This idea is discussed also in the context of world class chess players.  They innately “chunk” the chess board, and the possible moves, instead of analyzing everything individually.

-Why Michael Jordan couldn’t hit. Book goes into a discussion of how the brain “prunes” neural pathways after a certain age. The tradition thought was that neurons grow as people age. Now the science says that neurons don’t grow but rather the neural connections enforced at a young age get stronger as you age and the unused connections are pruned away. Thus, even though Michael Jordan had phenomenal athleticism, his neural pathways to hit baseballs were probably pruned while he was busy playing basketball.

-Why men have nipples. We all begin life as females. For the first six weeks, all embryos are female. Then, for males, a gene called the SRY gene (the “sex-determining region Y” gene) turns on and initiated the production of testes and leydig cells and testosterone, which precipitates the development of the male body.

-Natural selection and sexual selection. The author goes into an interesting discussion here. He starts off with articulating something call the “throwing gap” where, at a young age, boys and girls diverge in their ability to throw a ball. The author uses this as a platform to discuss the genetic differences between male and female (and how some female athletes test as “XY” male even though they appear and present as women).

The idea of sexual selection goes like this: the gender of the species that can reproduce more frequently ultimately develops, through natural selections, characteristics that enable such fast reproduction. For some gorillas primates, the female gestation and weening period is four years long, and thus in order for the male to reproduce frequently, he will keep a haram of female gorillas. To compete with other males, he will use strength and violence, or at the very least will develop physical attributes that resemble strength. Thus, males will compete and kill each other to maintain their ability to reproduce quickly (ie with multiple females), and such sexual selection will promote the traits most suitable to do so.

In other animals, these traits manifest differently. For example, birds must rely on developing physical traits of appearance and attraction, not so much strength, and thus you see the colors and calls like the birds of paradise. For seahorses, females can reproduce more quickly than males, and so females have sexually selected to be the stronger gender.

Humans are similar to primates and so the male genetic difference in size and strength is related to the gestation period of women, and the resulting natural selection that results.

-One way to trace human lineage is through the Y chromosome for men and mitochondrial DNA on the X chromosome for women. Something like 16M Asian men (or 0.5% of the worlds male population) have an identical shared Y chromosome. The theory goes that this indicates decendency from Gengis Khan who famously had hundreds of mates.

-Muscle types breakdown into two groups: fast twitch and slow twitch. Fast twitch fibers contract twice as quickly, useful for explosive activities like sprinting, but tire quickly. Slow twitch take longer to contract but tire less frequently, useful for long stamina activities like distance running.

Not surprisingly, athletes in sports of varying explosiveness have different proportions of fast to slow twitch muscle fibers. Begs the question, is this due to training or genetics. The answer is genetics. Author says that there is no scientific study that shows an ability for training to convert from one muscle type to another.

-Height vs. wing span.  Most people have a wing span to height ratio of 1:1.  The average NBA player has a ratio of 1.06, which is unusually high.  A high wing span relative to height show how “tall” a person is for their given height.  If your wingspan is bigger than your height, you’re better able to block shots.  In fact, author points to some analysis that showed people at a certain height with a longer wingspan blocked more shots than people without.

-Yao Ming’s parents were brought together by Chinese basketball officials because of their height.

-Malaria and fast twitch muscles:  this was probably the most fascinating part of the book for me.  It starts off with a discussion of the distinction between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers.  Fast twitch are generally anaerobic and are utilized for explosive activities.  Slow twitch are more aerobic consuming and are used for endurance activities.  While you can grow your muscles by working out and exercising, most humans cannot change the proportion of fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers.  You’re kind of born with a preset ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch.

So why are some people born with a greater proportion of fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers?  Specifically, the author investigates theories as to why Jamaican runners have dominated the fast running distances at the Olympics.  The author explores a theory by individuals named Morrison and Patrick Cooper a larger question, of why people with recent ancestry from West Africa have dominated the men’s and women’s 100M for the last 20 years, and why almost every cornerback in the NFL is from West African descent.

The theory goes like this.  Malaria in West Africa forced genes to proliferate in order to cope with malaria, and those genes in turn, which reduce an ability for a person to aerobically make energy, lead to shift in development of fast twitch muscle fibers, which are less dependent on oxygen for energy production.

In detail–the idea goes like this.  In some areas where malaria is prevalent,  people living in those areas can sometimes have their red blood cells “sickle” to protect against the maladies of malaria.  It’s a biological and evolutionary tradeoff–by sickling, the red cells protect against malaria, but the other side to that coin is that it causes those people to become very inefficient (and possibly downright ineffective) at dealing with aerobic activity.  So over time, the body develops muscles that do not rely heavily on oxygen for energy production, i.e., fast twitch muscles.

So the conclusion could be that those with West African descent may be programmed with a larger proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers to slow twitch muscle fibers, and thus, they are more apt to perform better in highly explosive athletic activities.  Things like short distance running (100 meters, for example) or being the speediest person on a football field for short periods of time (e.g., a cornerback).

It’s an interesting theory, and some may say that it is one that kind of touches the third rail of genetic investigation–the effect of “race” on evaluating athletic performance.  I look at it more as the effect of geography, climate, and ecological conditions on genetic development rather than the effect of “race.”

-East African domination of distance running.  The idea here is that a particular tribe of Kenyans, the Kalenjin tribe, produces a significant number of elite distance athletes.  It’s not to say that all Kalenjin runners will be elite, but rather that they have the most potential to respond to intense distance running training.

17 American men have run a sub 2:10 marathon ever.  32 Kalenjin men did it just in October 2011.

Interesting side note–for distance running, the fastest Jamaican 10k or longer distance would likely not qualify for an Olympics, and the fastest 100 meters from the Kalenjin would also not likely qualify.  It’s crazy, they both are running events, but completely different sports.

So, why are the Kalenjin so good at distance running, relative to other people?  Well, before diving into that question, the author wisely emphasizes that the system and network of distance time trials with the Kalenjin lend it possible that more elite distance runners will be detected.  In other words, the system is there to find more distance runners, so it’s hard to tell what would happen if a similar system existed among other African (or other) groups.

Research from a Copenhagen institute tried to answer the question why the Kalenjin were so good.  In doing so, they measured both elite runners and also average runners.  What they found was that the Kalenjin did not differ significantly from Danish men in the proportion of fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers, on the elite level or the average level.  Same with VO2 max, pretty much the same between Kalenjin and Danish men and boys.  One difference, though, was in body type.  The Kalenjin have longer limbs than their Danish counterparts, even though the average Dane was taller than the average Kalenjin.  The most unique finding, though was not just how long the legs were relative to each other, but how wide (or skinny) they are relative to one another.  The Kalenjin have 15-17% less thickness when compared to Danish.  Skinnier ankles means that a person can move weight more efficiently.  The farther down the leg a weight (“distal weight”) is distributed, the more energy expenditure.  Adding one-tenth of one pound of weight at an ankle increases oxygen consumption by 1%.

This leads to humans with skinnier ankles having a better “running economy” (which is the measure of how much oxygen a person consumes at a given pace).  So, proportionally long legs and skinnier legs lead to better running economy.  In other words, The Kalenjin can go faster for the same oxygen consumption because of this.

Author makes an interesting point.  You are statistically likely to predict the winner of a distance race based on the ankle width alone.

The Kalejin originally migrated from modern day southern Sudan/South Sudan, where people have a similar physical build.  So why are there not many elite distance runners from southern Sudan?  This may be where culture comes into play.  One theory that the author states is that southern and South Sudan are geopolitically unstable, which may have curtailed the development of athletes and/or lead to discrimination and selecting out of southern Sudanese athletes all together.  Thus, there is a relative lack of sports running culture and development in southern Sudan when compared to in Kenya.  Classic nature and nurture argument.  The author talks about the “Lost Boys” from Sudan who moved to the US and then subsequently had high accolades in US track and field.

So it’s not all genetic, according to this theory, nor is it all scientific, the influence of the world around particular regions influences the development of these athletes.